8chan and the issue of speech on the internet

The website known as 8chan has served as a cesspool of bigoted and racist hate mongering for a long time in which posters seemed to be competing to see who could come up with the most offensive stuff, all while arguing that they were doing it ironically, ‘for the lulz’ as the kids say these days. They operated with impunity under the shield of free speech and things were going well for them (in terms of reaching their target audience) until three mass shooters in Christchurch (targeting Muslims), Poway, California (targeting Jews), and at a Texas Walmart (targeting Hispanics) posted their hateful manifestos on the website.

This proved to be too much for those companies that had been at least indirectly supporting the site and the internet security firm Cloudflare withdrew its support, thus enabling hackers to invade the site, overwhelm it, and shut it down. The creator of 8chan, an American who lives in the Philippines and seems to covet notoriety, vows to bring the site back in some form with a new name 8kun and different security firm backing it.

The NPR radio program On the Media had a fascinating 17-minute segment tying together 8chan, the people behind it, as well as Q and the QAnon conspiracy theories that spread its message via that site, and the problem of balancing free speech and deplatforming on the internet.

It raises some crucial questions: should tech companies stymie sites like 8chan? Can 8chan stay dead? And what happens to the dark content that flourished on the site — content like the QAnon conspiracy, whose purveyor vowed to only release definitive content on 8chan, lest his narrative gets drowned out by that of impersonators?

Don’t judge a magazine by its cover (or name)

I have heard of the magazine Vogue and its seemingly junior counterpart Teen Vogue. Going purely on its name and shamelessly stereotyping, I had imagined that the latter would deal with pop culture and fashion. It turns out that I was quite wrong. While it does deal with those things, it turns out to also be a magazine pitching radical progressive politics at its target audience of teenagers.

David Palumbo-Liu, professor of comparative literature at Stanford University, says that the transition reflects the changing times.
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Beware of the extremists in moderate clothing

The rise of progressive policies and politicians in the Democratic party has clearly alarmed the oligarchy and they are responding with a slew of organizations within the party to take over the steering wheel and drive it in a corporate-friendly direction. These groups have labels that suggest that they consist of high-minded people who are above the partisan political fray and are merely seeking pragmatic bipartisan solutions to the country’s problems. These groups masquerade with names such as “No Labels’, ‘Across the Aisles’, ‘Third Way’, and ‘Problem Solvers Caucus’. The media invariably buys into the bogus narrative that these people are not partisan and promotes them as ‘centrists’ and ‘moderates’ when they are in reality extremists pushing a pro-oligarchic agenda. This is not an accident, since the major media has the same agenda as these groups.
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The racism in The Searchers and Heart of Darkness

I can vividly recall my strong negative reaction to Joseph Conrad’s highly acclaimed novel Heart of Darkness. Its racism appalled me as I wrote in a blog post ten years ago.

I remember the first time I read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, hailed by critics as a masterpiece. I was appalled at the blatantly racist portrayals of Africans and could barely get through the book. Many years later, I re-read it. The shock and anger that the original reading had aroused in me had worn off and I could see and appreciate Conrad’s skill with words in creating the deepening sense of foreboding as Marlow goes deeper into the jungle in search of Kurtz.

Ironically, Chinua Achebe gave a talk criticizing the book and saying that Conrad’s novel, whatever its other merits, perpetuated African stereotypes. The talk attracted a lot of attention and Conrad’s many admirers leapt to his defense, saying that Conrad was a product of his times and merely reflecting the views then current and that his book was actually a critique of the evils of colonialism.

Maybe so, but the racism was still there and still bothered me even on the second reading.

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How to do reporting when people won’t cooperate

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared before a congressional hearing this past week and was subjected to questioning by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who asked him about his “ongoing dinner parties with far-right figures.” As Jon Schwarz and Sam Biddle report, Zuckerbergs feelings must have been hurt by the impression being given that someone like him from the supposedly liberal tech industry was hobnobbing with notorious right wingers like “Tucker Carlson of Fox News; talk show host Hugh Hewitt; Ben Shapiro; former Free Beacon editor Matt Continetti; and Brent Bozell, founder of the Media Research Center”, as odious a group of media personalities as you are likely to encounter.
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Power protects power

In an interview, investigative journalist Ronan Farrow says that the resistance he faced from his former bosses at NBC about his investigations into the sexual abuse allegations against powerful media mogul Harvey Weinstein and their own star Matt Lauer are examples of how ‘power protects power’, even though some of the people proclaim themselves to be liberals and even progressives.
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Reality TV is corrupting everything

I am not an instinctive hugger of people, even when I know the other person well. It is not that I object to hugs or shy away from physical contact but to me a hug implies a level of intimacy that may not be mutually shared. So I wait for the other person to initiate it before engaging in it. I am also mindful of what female faculty members have told me of male faculty colleagues who hug too closely, too long, and in too encompassing a way, so that they felt uncomfortable. One female faculty member volunteered to demonstrate to me what she often experienced. She played the role of the male hugger, and I could immediately sense why it would feel awkward to be at the receiving end of such hugs.
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The problems with free speech absolutism

These days we seem to see a proliferation of hate speech, the tone being set by the petulant man-child who is currently president of the US, who lashes out at everyone he doesn’t like or who opposes him on anything, using the most incendiary rhetoric. This has given encouragement to all the bigots who see his words and actions as giving them a license to let loose too. The ghastly video below, seemingly cribbed from a scene in the film Kingsman: The Secret Service that shows Trump murdering various journalists, media organizations, and political rivals, was shown at a conference of Trump’s supporters at the Trump National Doral Miami resort and is an example of what is being supported and promoted by those at the very top. (Violence advisory.)


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George Will goes after Trump and the Republicans

The conservative columnist has been souring on Donald Trump for some time but Trump’s abandonment of the Kurds seems to have sent him over the edge and he excoriates Republicans in Congress for enabling his behavior.

Donald Trump, an ongoing eruption of self-refuting statements (“I’m a very stable genius” with “a very good brain”), is adding self-impeachment to his repertoire. Spiraling downward in a tightening gyre, his increasingly unhinged public performances (including the one with Finland’s dumbfounded president looking on) are as alarming as they are embarrassing. His decision regarding Syria and the Kurds was made so flippantly that it has stirred faint flickers of thinking among Congress’s vegetative Republicans.
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